One of the most typical difficulty for learners of English Language I’ve observed is that, they may afford very well with modeled dialogues in English courses, but when it comes to relate a story or a memory they find it disappointing (due to the lack of vocabulary, grammar, etc.)
Another factor which compounds this frustration is that a learner expect him/herself a lot to be able to handle such speech, because s/he thinks for a person being in the upper-intermediate level is not good to fail to tell story or narrate a memory of one’s life.
What do you think? How much do you agree? How would you explain this? Do you ever remind your learners not to expect themselves a lot, and let their ability talks for itself as they progress in learning a language?
Yeah, pretty much describes my experience. After 4 years of high school French, we read, Le Petit Prince as a class. And I said, 4 years and I can read a 5 year old’s book? Yes, the teacher said, you have a slightly more developed vocabulary, but the complexity of your sentence structure is very much like a child’s. I was pretty down about it. Then I learned, a 5 or 6 th grade reading level is how most newspapers and magazines are written – novels and technical document are written more advanced, but not general communication.
Nope, don’t feel down at all. If you have not been exposed to authentic and more complex texts and contexts, then that’s the reason. You’ve written and spoken only those modeled which you’ve studied over and over.
Plan an intensive reading program and start from upper-intermediate level books all the way up to advanced ones. Do not switch into Magazine and papers yet, since you may get puzzled and face voluminous unknown vocab, this action would backfire your suit.
More to it, French is far difficult than English, you need to spend more time, don’t judge such soon.
The error is in the school for letting the student believe they are an advanced-intermediate student, when all they are is a parrot repeating memorized conversations.
If you have taken 4 years of 1hr/day schoolroom lessons in a language that is at all grammatically different from your native language, you are still very much a beginner. Many are not fluent after 4 years, even in a total immersion environment, if they have any way to fall back on their native language for socializing (such as by living in expat communities).
I think that even today the two greatest problems are that languages are taught as though they existed first in written form, and secondly that grammar is taught as an end unto itself.
More often than not, the curriculum of language classes is planned and designed according to grammatical structures, with a particular obsession with verb forms. (E.g, “This week you are going to learn the past tense form of verbs,” etc.) That’s not how humans truly learn language. At best, your typical language course has maybe one or two brief audio (not video) dialog per lesson, often with little or no contextualization.
Language is naturally acquired by extensive exposure to contextualized and meaningful use by others long before production ever happens. With a first language, a human is listening for a year and a half before speaking, and writing, of course, doesn’t happen until school age. Obviously this can’t happen in foreign language class, but the concept isn’t even recognized in most courses.
To build this concept into a language course requires more knowledge about language acquisition than most language teachers have, but more importantly, it requires a whole lot of work that most aren’t willing to do, especially when the program itself isn’t designed that way.
Thank you. Indeed, we first listen for almost two years then we manage to talk. This is what I keep saying that if one wants to learn a foreign language s/he should listen to it for a long time without trying hard to understand, just listen.
They are all very well, but taking this matter into consideration that most learners are “Adult” who wish to learn a language within five or six months to the business level. How can they have enough time to learn it naturally by spending one and half year of listening and being exposed to it ?
Experience has proved that when you explain grammar for an educated adult person s/he can analyze and model the language and by practicing, pretty soon would be able to use it for the communication.
To learn it naturally is what I’m doing for my newly-born baby by exposing her to lots of English materials and situations and even talking to her, but for an adult person who has planned to learn it within a limited time this way do not seem suit the purpose.
Yes, we never explained for a kid the grammar and all that jazz, because that would be useless, but an adult person who enjoys plenty of experience and knowledge is quite a different case. This person can learn, think, practice, and can do a whole lot of other activities which they enable him/her to learn a second language, but all these stuff can’t be done by a kid.
I think this is why we explain grammar for a learner. A brief example is that when an adult person knows that there are present, past and future tenses for a verb, then s/he would learn the participles for every verb, instead of waiting to be exposed to thousands of sentences which they all have present, past and future tense of each verb. Just quickly calculate how many sentences they would be if one wanted to learn all about the grammatical points only through sentences and illustrations.
This is not to oppose the natural learning approach at all, but to remind that an adult is different from a kid and can be taught to learn it sooner than the natural period, and last but not least, the conditions and the situations which an adult has is not the same as a kid dose.
I often see the opposite. I teach in an American high school, but we have a lot of ESL students. When kids have had a lot of immersion but comparatively little direct instruction, what you often get are students who have a pretty decent social vocabulary and can function very well but that have shockingly little ability to write academic English or even communicate at all in written English. But you could listen to them hanging out with their buddies in the cafeteria and never guess.
I’d argue that Le Petit Prince isn’t a 5-year old’s book; the level of the written language and the subtleties in the text are way above grade-school level, particularly for a second language. People are fooled or put off by the drawings, but that’s part of the charm of the book - it takes an adult perspective to appreciate what the Prince is teaching the narrator.
It’s one of my favourite books and appreciate it much more as an adult than when I first read it - which, by the way, was in a Mother Tongue French class in Grade 9 in Québec. I’ve discussed it a lot with my mom over the years (who actually read the whole thing aloud to me when I first brought it home in Grade 9…I reread it to do the work in the class). She’s a teacher and French-language teaching consultant for an anglophone school board; I’ve seen her develop language courses for K-11, so I do consider her an expert when she talks about age-appropriate reading levels!
So I wouldn’t feel bad, Arkcon, because it sounds like you were at just the right level to be able to read the text, but more importantly to understand it! I think your teacher was an idiot for “selling” the book to you as a kid’s book…she did you a disservice, IMHO.
Well, a full package of learning, yes, takes time with attached cultural points to it. But the group I talked about is the people who wish to learn how to write, speak, and listen at a business level. Though, still the misunderstanding and miscommunication can take place, but a complacent smile enriches their confidence when they can shake hand and greet their foreign guests at their office to talk about business. When they send and receive emails to the people over the globe. When they travel and can read signs and order a meal, while previously they had to mime.
If the learner wants to enrich and complete his/her learning, then all the things you said are to be fully observed.
The problem I see most with the specifically rules-based business-language approach is one that I am actually seeing in your posts now. I personally think of it as the “Uncanny Valley” of language. In other words, the text or speech is so close to being correct, with very minor problems, or even simply usages which aren’t necessarily incorrect, just not quite what would be expected by a native speaker.
I find that those types of mistakes can be detrimental to business dealings, because most native speakers don’t think of their idioms or figures of speech as being unique and hard to learn. When someone is technically very correct in speech/text, but still making “mistakes” in common usage, they can come across as lacking in social grace, rather than lacking in language experience.
In many cultures, not only is it important to be able to send a business email or document to your coworkers, but also to shoot the shit (hang out and talk in an informal setting) with them after work also. Business (formal) language only enables the first of those situations.
“Complacent” means self-satisfied, but in a bad way. Complacency is a negative attribute – it means you do not give something the attention it deserves, either out of ignorance or laziness.
It’s hard to point to each individual error: the sentence structure is awkward and the word choice is poor. There are some pluralization errors (shake hands), errant articles (send and receive emails to the people around the globe – “the” is not needed) and too many commas (however, many native speakers are guilty of too many commas as well).
Rather than correct errors one by one I would simply rewrite the sentence.
My version:
It’s true that a complete language learning package takes time, especially when cultural topics are covered. But the group I am referring to are those who wish to learn to write, speak, and listen at a business level. The goal is for them to achieve confidence in speaking with foreign visitors, sending and receiving emails, and reading signs and ordering food while traveling in foreign countries.
Of course, but the question is at what point in the sequence of instruction to do so, and how much can realistically be assimilated? It’s very rare for anyone to truly assimilate even half of the grammar necessary for truly competent communication purely from explicit rule-instruction. There are just too many rules to learn. The same can be said about lexicon. A second language learner will never truly acquire lexical competency purely by studying decontextualized lists of words. It’s much more efficient to learn through high volume, meaningful input (spoken and in print).
Moreover, the fixation on verb forms–which is partly due to a hangover from centuries-old Latin instruction–tends to detract from other equally as important kind of grammar instruction, particularly non-representational functions that grammar plays.
Here goes then - Please note that these are all just my impressions - as far as I can tell, very little of what you write is “incorrect,” just not conversational in style.
Here I would say “This is WHY I keep saying that” or “This is what I keep saying: if one wants…”
This whole bit is understandable, but a little odd. I’m not sure what you mean by “They are all very well” - “the students are very good at their lessons?” “The precepts what we’re talking about are well and good, but?” Other odd phrasings: “one and half year” should be either one and a half years, or a year and a half.
Experience has proven. Would be able to use it for communication. (*the *is extraneous there.)
Does not seem to suit the purpose.
explained TO a kid…
“This person can…” that’s just odd to me. Usually you see “people like this can” or “a person like this can.” “This person” seems oddly depersonalizing - almost making them into a thing, rather than an agent.
“… and do a whole lot of other activities which enable him/her to learn a second language, but all this can’t be done by a kid.” (excising the words can, they, and all these stuff.
how many sentences *there *would be
This entire sentence is worded strangely to me. No more than bad English papers by fellow students, but if you’re really wanting to improve, I figure it can’t hurt to see what could work instead.
First off “…but to remind that an adult is different from a kid and can be taught to learn it sooner than the natural period…” we’ll take this bit.
“but to remind” really needs a noun behind it. “but to remind you that” or “but to remind everyone that” or “but to remind people that” would all work, and it would flow better.
“and can be taught to learn it sooner than the natural period” would flow better if the it were cut, or replaced with the word “language.”
“the conditions and the situations which an adult has is not the same as a kid dose” If I were editing, I would suggest the following instead: “the conditions and situations which an adult faces are not the same as those which would face a child.”
Again, please understand that I’m not criticizing you or your proficiency - I don’t even speak ANY second language well enough to trust posting in. But like I said, when you’re so close to being perfect, a lot of what people would overlook in someone they remember is a language learner, they won’t overlook because the “mistakes” are so minor that they forget the person isn’t a native.
I should really thank you. Please keep correcting me. And not only you, I ask other members do correct my mistakes even the minor ones, and [ my blunders . . . lol . . ]
